We screen works on the vast wall of the New World Symphony Center designed by Frank Gehry and utilize the 160 speaker surround sound system based in Soundscape Park – it is a natural and rather obvious environment to consider music as a focus. This year I selected artworks that employ the universal language of music and choreography.

I view my role as that of a facilitator, aiming to get the best outcome for the constituent galleries, artists, art fair, venue, city and the various audiences. I look for simple triggers to encourage galleries to submit related work and aim to show as much varied material as possible, offering maximum opportunities for exhibition of artwork beyond the confines of the Art Basel in Miami Beach Art Fair in the Convention Center. My goal is also to show work that will excite and engage the widest possible audience.

In considering the programming around artists and their use of music, I realised that certain music lingers in my head and over many decades, including: music that is fairly dark, somber and yet remains deeply life affirming, and artists as diverse as Augustus Pablo, Philip Glass, Chopin, Arvo Part, and Eleni Karaindrou. This abstract and instinctive logic formed by rhythms, repetitions, echoes, depth of bass, shifts in keys and chord progressions are some of the musical elements that drive my selection processes. I am often attracted by artworks that affect me like certain music does; a thud in my chest, reverberations through my body, tingles down my neck and spine. I definitely make my selection decisions on how a moving image artwork sounds.

“How do we arrive at these decisions or indeed make them” – so I posed this question to myself – while planning my process for selection this year. So I asked galleries to consider their artists who have made Film/Sound works that connect to music in any way. But in posing this – I had to think how does music influence me and my decision making.

How do I stay integrity driven to myself and how do I make a programme that makes sense from so many different submitted artworks, albeit all moving image – but that and their music is the only true common thread (but common enough ….)

So I decided to plan a programme that I have always wanted to do. That takes numerous artworks and builds musical/sound crescendo from their composite sounds and creates an overall viewing/listening experience – that may enable the audience to engage and experience much like they might at a classical concert, piano recital or a heavyweight dub sound system (via one piece of music or a selected combination of musical tracks).

Now – I don’t know if I will or have achieved my goal in terms of the best possible output – but I have started a process that will lead my decision making processes hereonin.

Each year, as evening darkens the skies over Art Basel Miami Beach, visitors gather on the lawns of SoundScape Park to experience video works from some of the world’s most exciting artists. Sharing picnics, drinks, or simply being absorbed by art, they sit beneath the towering 7,000 square foot projection wall of the New World Center as it displays a program of films carefully chosen by curator David Gryn.

“My selections are quite instinctive,” says Gryn. “I am often attracted by artworks that affect me like music does; a thud in my chest, reverberations through my body, tingles down my neck and spine.” Fittingly then, music is the theme of this year’s program. “As [the New World Center is] a concert venue, music is inherent to the place we show the work and contextually it has a strong resonance. Asking galleries to submit films which engage with music in some way felt like a natural choice.”

Through this year’s theme, Gryn hopes to create a larger-than-life show to excite and engage the broadest possible audience. “Music is something universal. When you have dialogue in a certain language, you often exclude people outside it. Music, like art, crosses that divide – a sort of abstract language that has its own voice and says something about the human condition.”

Be enveloped by art

The program includes a set of 28 short films screened under the title Best Dressed Chicken in Town. “This was named after the 1970s reggae track by Doctor Alimantado, which has long inspired me. The idea behind it was to combine artworks using music and sound which, over the program’s two hour span, swell to a crescendo,” Gryn explains. And though he will not be drawn on a favorite this year (“I picked them, so they’re all my favorites!”), he singles out Terrorist of Love by Keren Cytter as being a film which never fails to make him smile, while Wilhelm Sasnal’s Kiss is “utterly wonderful.”

In addition to the screening of films, this year also heralds the third edition of Surround Sound, a specially commissioned program of sound works designed to take full advantage of SoundScape Park’s 160 speaker surround sound system. “I view my role as that of a facilitator. I aim to serve the artwork, the artist, and the gallery well by presenting pieces which will have the most resonance with the audience in the setting that we have.”

The communal act of experiencing art in this way is something special, says Gryn. “You get a sense of excitement, something you can palpably feel. You really do see an audience being enveloped by art. That’s what this platform achieves – and it encourages galleries, their artists, and a wider audience to take time with mediums that often don’t get much of a look in at events like this. There’s not another experience quite like it in the context of an art fair. Period.”

In addition to the outdoor program, visitors will be able to individually (touch) screen over 50 works by artists such as Stephen Dean, Edith Dekyndt, Maggie Lee, Gabriel Lester, Shelly Nadashi, Sophie Nys, João Vasco Paiva, Betye Saar, Jason Simon, Su-Mei Tse and Tuo Wang, as well as all the artist listed in the outdoor programs.

The Film Library is next to the Magazine area and opposite the Salon and Conversations auditorium.

Talks:

Tues Nov 29. 11am-12.30pm

Insights at New World Center: The Music in Film & Sound, Art Basel in Miami Beach
Featuring: David Gryn, Kathryn Mikesell, Molly Palmer and John Kieser
New World Center, SunTrust Pavilion. RSVP/Details & Tickets: www.nws.edu/insights

David Gryn over 20 years has grown and ever-strong reputation worldwide as a leading curator and promoter showing artists’ films in the context of the cinema. David has produced, curated and promoted artists’ film projects and events that have consistently excited and attracted large audiences and introduced new audiences to the ... Continue reading →